Sanctioned Solitude
by SecretEngima
Summary: When had they become her Team and not simply her fellow soldiers? When, in the fleeting and battle-filled time on Reach, had she stopped looking over her shoulder every other minute, instead trusting them to be there watching it for her? When had she stopped being a "lone wolf" and become a part of a pack? Now they were gone, and being a lone wolf was all she had left. Fem!NobleSix


**Hi there everyone! Before anyone asks, no, I have no idea what I'm doing. This is my first, and almost certainly my last Halo fanfiction, so I ask all die-hard fans of the series to please be gentle. The only things I know about this series come from Halo: Reach, a few hunts through the wiki pages, and watching the remastered cutscenes of Halo 2 (the 'two sticks and rock' speech anyone?). Anything else I remain wholly unaware of. This one-shot was inspired by the video game Halo: Reach, particularly its ending (which gave me goose-bumps like crazy), finding the wiki page on the Monument to Noble Team, and lastly the song Burning Heart** **by SVRCINA. Now, I normally don't write stuff in any series I'm not very familiar with in order to avoid stepping on any toes, but this plot bunny just would not let go until I not only wrote it, but posted it. So ... yeah. Hope you enjoy and please remember it is probably not entirely canon compliant. Then again, what fanfiction story is?**

 **To anyone coming here wondering why I haven't updated my Transformers or Fairy Tail story: I'm working on it. This is kinda a test run to ensure everything on my computer is working again. I only received my replacement computer part like, two days ago because it somehow got shipped to the wrong location. As in, no longer on the correct CONTINENT wrong location. How my computer part ended up taking a** **vacation to Guam when I am only a week's drive away from the shipping warehouse is still beyond me.**

 **Warning: This has angst and character death. Nothing graphic (I think) but this is NOT a fluffy warm-and-fuzzies story. That is all.**

 **Copyright Disclaimer: I do not own Halo, or Halo: Reach, or even the epic character Noble Six. The only things I own are my personal interpretation of the character and the poem/monument thingy at the end of the story.**

* * *

Don't stop. Keep running. Fire, dodge, reload, fire, empty. Toss aside. Stab the enemy in front through the throat, _fast-quick-clean-just-like-Emile-used-to_ , grab his gun. Start all over again. Over and over and over until time became meaningless. No. Time became worse than meaningless. It became the enemy. A constantly draining timer, steadily dragging away her life, her stamina, until she would eventually give out under the never-ending flow of enemies. It was hopeless, pointless, exhausting. An agonizingly slow, terrifying, and grueling way to die.

Don't stop. Keep running. Fire, dodge, reload, fire. A never ending parade of snarling, shrieking enemies that sought only one thing. Her lifeblood spilled on the ground.

A lucky shot from behind thudded into the back of her left shoulder, drawing a breathless snarl from her as she whirled and fired on the attacker. A part of her cried out, her lips moving in a call for something that no longer existed, something she had never relied on before, but now that she finally had learned to trust it, had abandoned her.

* * *

 _"_ _But we're a team. That Lone Wolf stuff? Stays behind. Clear?"_

* * *

A team. She had never had a team before. Not really. Just brief encounters, assignments and alliances out of convenience. Never permanent, never real. She had always been alone simply because no one else could keep up. She had never needed anyone else, they would just slow her down. They were just a liability.

Then she'd been assigned to Them and her perspective, her world, had changed. When had it changed? When, amid the flurry of combat, of battle scars and furtively snatched moments of peace, had her world stopped being "I" and become "us" instead?

* * *

 _A night without an assignment for once. Before the Covenant fleet had arrived in force, back when the Winter Contingency still had a chance of succeeding. A case of beer that Emile had "liberated" from who-knew-where and a sultry Slavic accent challenging her to a drinking game while Carter rolled his eyes and Jorge laughed as he was coaxed into singing a hungarian drinking song he'd learned somewhere along his long career._

 _It had been warm that night. Not the outside temperature, heavens knew the snow falling outside and the ice on the base windows testified to that. But somewhere deep inside her. A part of her that had been buried for years in favor of missions, statistics, and an eternally singular existence finally rising out of its box to bathe in the fleeting warmth of companionship._

 _Kat had gotten drunk that night, Six had too, but she was much, much better at hiding it than their Tech genius. Emile had taken off his helmet for once, his battle scars plain to see as he used his Kukri to emphatically act out some of Noble Team's wilder stunts. Jun had spent most of the time either rolling his eyes or glibly correcting Emile's exaggerations. Jorge had settled in a corner with Carter to watch, small but identical smiles on their faces as they watched their team relax._

 _That had been their only party. Because shortly after that had been the steady loss of ground, the arrival of the first supercarrier, and Jorge's sacrifice. From then on, what moments of rest they could snatch were always furtive, quiet, grieving. A quiet that shared pain and empathized with the weariness they all felt seeping into their bones. Emile told no more stories, Jun spent more time cleaning his rifle than talking, Carter's jaw was always tight with stress, and Kat was more snappy and sarcastic to non-team-members than Six had thought humanly possible._

 _Six had never really mourned. Not like normal people did. She had simply spent whatever time could be spared outside cleaning her equipment and taking care of herself clutching a battered pair of dog-tags that had belonged to a man much braver than she and trying to recall the words to his favorite hungarian song._

* * *

Fire, dodge, run, fire, empty, throw it away. Memories, so sharp she could taste them yet fleetingly dim because of her pumping adrenaline added fire to her veins. Somehow, her heaving lungs managed to let loose a howl of rage as she plunged the kukri, Emile's kukri that she had pried from his dead fingers because she had lost her own and **needed** one so desperately, into the eye of an Elite who had gotten too close.

Wrenching the kukri free, she used her free hand to wrench the Elite's plasma sword from its limp fingers and whirled on the others that were approaching. Another howl broke free from her lips, the wild, broken sound of a wolf that had lost its pack and some primal instinct in the approaching Covenant creatures made them falter and step back from the source of the sound. The sword in her hand hummed and screamed as she dived in among them, marring the already chipped white paint of her armor with the blood of the sword's creators.

Time continued to drain away. The world blurred in and out of clarity, leaving only snapshots of the never-ending fight that she knew she could not win but refused to lose anyway. Plunging her stolen sword through the open mouth of a Jackal. Tossing away the de-powered sword and grabbing a large plasma gun instead to blow off the head of a Grunt. An Elite Zealot kicking her back hard enough to send her sprawling only for her to recover with a roll and retaliate with a wild salvo of plasma.

Bodies piled up, time ticked away, lowering the sun and her endurance with the same relentless patience. Several times, shots from the enemy slammed into her armor, nearly driving her down, nearly convincing her to give up and let it finally end.

But she always got up again, always kept fighting. Voices rang in her head, one of them sharper, clearer than the others, the voice of Noble One, her leader, her Alpha, _"Make him proud."_

That had been an order, just like so many others, but it had also been something Six had never had before. A promise between teammates. An acknowledgment that Six had been Jorge's teammate as well and that as such, she had a right, as well as a duty, to honor him. _"Make him proud."_ This world had been Jorge's home, he had fought for it, died for it. But not just that, he had given his life when he could have let her give hers instead. So she couldn't give up. Jorge would never forgive her for letting them finish her without taking as many down with her as she could. Carter would never forgive her for breaking their promise.

Her team would never forgive her for giving up when she was the last one of them standing.

* * *

 _When had they become her team and not simply her fellow soldiers? Her fellow Spartans? When, in the fleeting and battle-filled time on Reach, had she stopped looking over her shoulder every other minute and instead trusted Jun or Emile or Kat or Carter to be there watching it for her? When had she stopped being a "lone wolf" and become a part of a pack?_

* * *

She had never had to rely on anyone else before. Not consistently. Fellow soldiers sure, fellow Spartans, occasionally. But those had always been once or twice per face, names to be stored for the mission then forgotten because the chances were high she would never talk to them again.

When had first five, then four, familiar faces, with names and memories, etched themselves so deeply into her mind that she could remember them even now, with her lungs aching and the sun burning a sinking path in the sky as the enemies just kept coming?

She didn't know. She couldn't pinpoint it. All she knew was that it had happened. She had come to work with them without conscious thought, trust them without even realizing, and now that she was alone again, it felt like someone had cut off extra limbs she'd previously taken for granted and stabbed her through the heart.

She had left the "Lone Wolf act" behind. But now there was nothing left for her to be **except** a lone wolf. Her pack was gone. Jorge, Kat, Carter, Emile, all dead. Jun, gone, hopefully still alive, but gone none-the-less. She was the last one here. She was alone and for the first time in years that fact scared her. Hurt her.

There were no Grunts or Jackals shooting at her anymore, no tanks trying to crush her or blast her into bits. Her partially malfunctioning scanners registered them pulling back to the edges of the field, leaving it clear for Elites of various classes to come at her.

She had gotten away the last three times. Three days since Emile had died and the Pillar of Autumn had escaped with Halsey's precious AI. Three days of fighting and hiding. Three days alone, with only a trail of enemy bodies to mark her passage.

Not this time though. Without even thinking about it, without even acknowledging it in between taking down Covenant after Covenant, she knew that this was where she would finally fall.

But on her honor, on Noble Team's honor, she was going to take as many of them with her as she could.

Her HUD finally died and she ripped off her helmet with a gasp, a stale breeze brushing the sweat-matted hair stuck to her forehead and temples. Another scream ripped from her throat as she opened fire on an approaching General, driving him back. Her body swayed against her will and she barely turned in time to fight off the Elite that tried to stab her from behind. The butt of her rifle smashed into the side of its head, sending it to the ground where she ended its life with two swift shots from the pistol she'd gotten at some point.

There were others approaching, but her legs no longer wanted to run. Instead, she fired a wild spray of bullets with both of her guns until they ran out of ammo. She turned unsteadily, eyes instinctively searching out a fallen Covenant weapon. _Keep fighting. Make him proud. Keep fighting. Make him proud. Keep fighting-_ A rough, clawed hand grabbed her armor as she turned and knocked her off of her feet with a snarl. Yellow armor flashed in her vision as her eyes swam from the impact of her head with the ground and she kicked out instinctively. _Make him proud. Make_ ** _them_** _proud!_

A General leaned over her, his mandibles opening in a hateful growl and she punched him first in the throat before he could bring his weapon to bear, then kicked him to knock him away. _Keep fighting. Don't stop, make them proud-keep-fighting-make-them-proud-_ The General staggered back just as a flash of red, the same color as the blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth, came from the other side. She kicked it back, lungs burning, legs barely able to move from the exhaustion dragging them down. _Keep-fighting-make-them-proud-keep-fighting-_

Heat and razor-sharp edges slid into her midriff, but her nerves were too shot with adrenaline to feel the pain. Her hand lashed out again, grasping the wrist holding the sword as if she could somehow stop it from piercing her even though the sword was already buried deep in her flesh. Numbness washed over her and darkness rapidly creeped around the edges of her vision as the Zealot jerked his wrist free of her weakening grip.

For just a moment, her eyes seared into the Zealot's, grey of a washed-out storm meeting in-human amber, and she knew that this was the face of her killer, this was her end. The Zealot stepped back as Six turned her gaze to the sky and weakly groped for something in her belt. The wary screeches of the Elites surrounding her sounded very far away as her fingers shakily grasped the desired objects and she clutched them tight. _I'm sorry. I couldn't take them all with me, but even so…_ The darkness pulled her under, dragging her away from the sight of the twilight sky above her and she felt her lips move without sound, asking the only question that seemed important anymore. The question of the lone wolf to its fallen pack.

"Did I make you proud?"

* * *

 **Many Years Later:**

Whispers of surprise and confusion rose and swelled around him as he walked quietly through the crowd to his goal. It was years after the Human-Covenant war, with this particular day being a special memorial day to remember the lives lost. The planet was Reach, restored and thriving once again, and many had gathered for the memorial service taking place at the Noble Monument.

But of all the participants, no one had expected the figure now striding stiffly through their midst toward the monument. After all, what did the Sangheili Emissary Teko Rafam want with the Monument to Noble Team?

The tall and scarred Sangheili gave no answer. He merely looked at the general leading the service and quietly asked to approach the monument itself. Permission granted, he strode along the line of figures that made up the monument, his amber eyes seeking out one figure in particular. Each statue was lifelike, painted with the armor colors of the original Noble Team members. Thus, when he finally stopped, there was no doubt as to which member of the fallen team he was staring at. White armor with aqua highlights glinted in the afternoon sun, a yellow colored visor staring sternly off into the distance.

Slowly, Teko's gaze fell to the base of the statue, where a short memorial poem normally rested at the feet of each member. Each member save one. Teko's mandibles clicked faintly at the sight of blank metal before he looked back up at the statue.

Teko's official human escort, finally losing the battle with his own curiosity, queried, "Emissary Rafam? Is … everything alright?"

"Why does this one have no poem?" His growl was soft and questioning, setting off another round of surprised murmurs through the crowd.

The escort shrugged helplessly, "I … I guess no one knew what to put down. B312 wasn't on Noble Team very long, so no one was sure what exactly she should be honored as. Noble One was their leader, Noble Two was their genius, Noble Four was their merciless wrath … No one could agree on what Noble Six was."

Teko clicked his mandibles again, seemingly in disapproval of the answer, but was then silent for a long time. His gaze was far away, remembering an exhausting battle from years ago. Recalling the near-endless piles of Covenant bodies, the pounding adrenaline of combat against a foe that just Would. Not. Fall. A foe whose eyes had, even in the end, burned with a light Teko knew all too well.

Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out two rusted and battered items strung together on an equally rusted and battered chain. Placing it reverently at the feet of the statue of Noble Six, Teko bowed deeply to the figure, then turned and walked away.

Halfway down the steps, Teko turned to look back at the statue, then at his escort. When he spoke, even though his voice was level, everyone seemed to hear it, "She was their defiance. And, their pride." Ignoring the heavy, confused silence that followed that statement, Teko resumed walking away.

He did not look back again. Not even when the general presiding over the ceremony tentatively examined the battered items Teko had left behind and discovered them to be two, mostly rusted over and blood-smeared dogtags with the name "Jorge-052" still barely visible under their abuse and wear. A remnant of a lost battle, a lingering memory of a fallen pack, a sign of a single, stubborn promise.

* * *

 _"_ _Keep 'em. He gave 'em to you. I'll honor him my own way."_

* * *

 _"_ _Sorry I came alone."_

 _"_ _Make him proud."_

* * *

 _Spartan B312_

 _Spartan MKIII_

 _Birthplace: Unknown_

 _Birthdate: Unknown_

 _Last to join, last to fall,_

 _A lone wolf that completed a pack._

 _Never did she falter in the face of all foes,_

 _A single figure enough to make enemies fear._

 _When all others fell, she carried on,_

 _Shouldering their burdens and will as her own._

 _She staunchly defended the ground on which her comrades had perished,_

 _A light in the darkness that refused to be quenched._

 _In recognition of this, her unfaltering resistance,_

 _We honor her as the defiant pride of Noble._


End file.
